Creation Museum To Spend 73 million On Noah's Ark Exhibit

Photo of proposed Noah's Ark exhibit at the Creation Museum

Christian group behind controversial Creationist Museum to build 800-acre theme park with replica Noah’s Ark The Independent.co.uk Feb. 28.2014

The Christian group behind a controversial Creationist Museum in Kentucky has announced that it has sufficient funds to begin construction on an Old Testament theme park, based around a 510ft replica of Noah’s Ark.

The 800-acre “Ark Encounter” park would also feature a recreation of a pre-Flood village, a “Tower of Babel” containing an audio-visual effects theatre, and a theme park ride through the 10 plagues of Egypt. The biblical vessel would be the largest timber-framed structure in the US. Officials say they intend to break ground in May, and that the park will open to the public in 2016.

Ken Ham, president of the group Answers in Genesis and founder of the Creation Museum, wrote on his website that “God has burdened AiG to rebuild a full-size Noah’s Ark.” Yet after plans for the park were first unveiled in 2010, fundraising proved to be a challenge. The project is expected to cost more than $120m (£72m) in total, and needs at least $70m to complete its first phase. The ark alone will cost $24.5m to construct...

Creation Museum founder Ken Ham announced Thursday that enough money had been raised to begin construction of a 510-foot replica of Noah's Ark as part of a multimillion-dollar Ark Encounter project. Huffington Post, march 4,2014



Unintended but foreseeable consequences of debating with the enemy when the enemy is entrenched believes with absolute religious certainty.

Thanks to Bill Nye, Creationists Raised Enough Money to Build an Anti-Science Theme Park
The science guy won a debate—and subsidized the enemy New Republic.com,March 4, 2014

I’m not saying “I told you so” (in fact I am, of course), but the main upshot of the Bill Nye/Ken Ham debate appears to have tipped the final balance in favor of Ham.

The debate, as you’ll recall, was held in Kentucky’s Creation Museum, was on the validity of creationism as a model of biological origins and diversity, and the proceeds from the DVDs went to Ham and other creationists.

Now, according to the Guardian and other venues, Ham has announced that proceeds from the debate have apparently revived the dormant “Ark Park” project, which will contain a “life-sized” replica of Noah’s Ark.

This is precisely what I predicted in a pre-debate post on January 5, “Ark Park near collapse; will Bill Nye help finance it?” At the time I wrote this:

What outweighs everything, though, is the possibility that Nye will lose by simply showing up, and thereby raising big bucks for the Creation Museum or the troubled Ark Park. And no matter what he says, or how good he is, if he is raising money that helps promulgate lies to the children he loves, Nye is making a very serious mistake.

The Ark Park had been in financial trouble because people weren’t buying its bonds, but if Ham isn’t lying—and one has to worry about that given his creationist mission—the debate got the needed interest to revive the park.